


I Could Give All to Time

by futurerae



Category: Back to the Future (Movies), Back to the Future: The Game
Genre: Drabble Collection, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Huddling For Warmth, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Snippets, and other random shit, era:1885, era:1931, era:1985, era:1986, era:2015, era:pre-movies, heat exhaustion, only most of them are too long to be drabbles really, sleep-deprivation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-12-19
Packaged: 2018-08-23 21:23:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,899
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8343328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/futurerae/pseuds/futurerae
Summary: A collection of short ficlets I've written for drabble prompts and such. These occur all over the timeline; they're not necessarily all compatible with canon or with each other, but that's the beauty of time travel and alternate timelines, isn't it? If you don't want to give something up, you don't HAVE TO. You can keep everything, close in tight behind your ribs, where it's safe and no one can reach in and take it.





	1. Dead Tired

**Author's Note:**

> Prompt: sleepy

* * *

Marty stands over where Doc’s been working for the last few hours; he rubs his eyes with a sigh and a yawn.

There are ostensibly good reasons for Marty hanging around overnight during these long experiments—he can help with tools, hook up electronics, watch reactions, just generally be another set of eyes and hands—but more often than not, it’s this duty finds himself called upon to perform: the Scientist Extraction, Relocation, and Insulation procedure.

Doc’s face-first in his work, snoring quietly; the reams of notes he’s taken tonight flutter softly with each exhale. Marty sighs again, reaches over Doc’s slumped form to turn off the device they’d been testing, then moves to work his hands under Doc’s arms, hauling him backward off the stool. The goal here isn’t to move him without waking him—that would be impossible—but to wake him up just enough that he can get his own feet under him and _help out a little_ on the long journey to his bed. 

“Jesus, Doc,” Marty grumbles, stumbling; Doc stirs a little, tries awkwardly to turn. Marty lets him, shifting until they’re side by side, one arm slung over Marty’s shoulders like a lifeline. “How many times do I have to remind you that _sleep exists for a reason?”_

Doc mumbles something mostly incoherent, then makes an effort to repeat himself; all that's intelligible is: “…sleep when you’re dead.”

Marty grimaces. It’s a joke, he knows that, but after everything they’ve been through… “…you keep talking like that and I’ll just drop your ass on the floor, yeah?”

A vague hum and a head-shake are all the answer Marty gets, and from there it’s just procedural—get Doc into the bed, get his shoes off and a blanket on, get his _own_ shoes off and crawl in alongside (they will both sleep better; the twin bed hasn’t been touched in months), remember to set an alarm on his watch before turning off the nearest light.

This time though, just as they’re drifting off, Marty hears a quiet voice above his ear: “I’m sorry, Marty. Shouldn’t have…”

_It’s okay,_ Marty wants to say, but his throat is suddenly tight and he’s exhausted too, and he burrows in closer, content to just be exactly where he is.

* * *


	2. About Time

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Marry me, future boy"

* * *

June of 2015 finds them on the couch in front of the morning news, the remains of Marty’s admittedly mediocre attempt at breakfast scattered across the coffee table (after all these years, he can manage eggs and bacon, but the finer points of pancake construction are still maddeningly elusive). On the screen, they watch a nation celebrate–passionate, exuberant young people sharing screentime with middle-aged blue-collar types and little old ladies who’ve spent literally an entire lifetime waiting for this moment. They’d known this was coming eventually—trips to the further future had proven as much and no form of discrimination lasts _forever_ —but neither of them had expected to wake up one morning and find out it’d just _happened._

Doc has his arm across the back of the sofa, fingers playing through the hair at the nape of Marty’s neck; this is a habitual, comfortingly familiar thing, but then the contact stills.

Marty turns to see what’s up, but what he ends up registering, in the sharp morning light, is how well the years and rejuvenations have treated his friend. It’s something he hadn’t really noticed before, but yeah, Doc’s only now starting to look the age he was back in the 80s, before the time machine and all the doors it opened. They might not _exactly_ be growing old together, but they’re on much closer tracks than they used to be, and that’s a comfort.

“The courthouse is open until five, I think,” Doc muses toward the screen, then turns to meet Marty’s questioning look with a smile; Marty feels his breath catch, a sudden bubble of pressure in his throat.

“Marry me, Future Boy?” Doc asks, voice subdued, quiet.

The pressure bursts; it leaves a kind of giddiness in its wake. “Gee, let me think about that,” Marty teases–laughing, leaning in, letting the kiss stand as the only answer they’ll ever need.

* * *


	3. Expert Opinion

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: banana

* * *

It’s ass-early on a Saturday—way too early to be awake and moving around, definitely too early to bother being embarrassed by the thought _my best friend can’t afford to eat anything for breakfast but more Burger King_. So when Marty’s mom tells him to at _least_ grab some fruit or something on the way out—goodness, what people will think of her sending her fifteen-year-old son out into the world without feeding him—Marty doesn’t think twice about peeling two bananas off the bunch arranged artfully in a basket in the middle of the table, not just one.

A yawn, a shrug, waving the fruit vaguely in her direction as he crosses through the living room and out the front door. 

When he gets to Doc’s place, Doc’s already got the engine pulled out of the old clunker he picked up for free last week. They’re going to try to rebuild it, he’s been told, though auto repair isn’t really in either of their skill sets.

“Yo, hey Doc,” Marty calls, tossing one of the bananas across the mess. They have like, potassium and shit, right? They’re good for you? Better than burgers, anyway. “Mom wouldn’t let me leave without grabbing something, but no way I can eat ‘em both.”

Doc makes a thankful noise—then proceeds to turn the thing upside down and pinch the wrong end, pulling down the peel in strips. Marty laughs—he can’t help it, it’s early and this is too ridiculous.

“What on earth is so funny?” Doc asks, sounding just a little ticked off.

Marty shrugs. “You’re doing it wrong? It goes like this.” He holds up his own in example, the stem upward.

“I’ll have you know, Marty,” Doc says around a mouthful; the annoyance is gone, replaced by a fond, teasing tone. “That this method is far more efficient at not leaving you stuck with an inaccessible end, _and_ provides a convenient handhold. What’s more, if you examine the behavior of primates for whom bananas are a substantial part of their diet, you’ll notice that they all employ this technique.”

Hm. “Okay, maybe that stuff’s all true, but Doc, since when do you take advice from _monkeys?_ ”

“First off, they’re apes, not monkeys.” Doc gestures with the banana, absently lecturing; Marty has to admit that without the stem to hold onto, it probably would have gone flying. “Second: Since they’re actually the experts in this particular matter, and there’s always wisdom to be gained from remembering humanity’s origins.”

Marty grins. “Even if they’re monkeys.”

“They’re not—” Doc shakes his head, fighting a smile. “Yes. Even if they’re _lower primates_.”

“Okay, fair enough,” Marty says, peeling his own banana the _right_ way, thank you very much. “Actually, this is great, this works.”

“What does?”

Marty takes a bite, drums on the hood of the car with one hand. “The, ah, the kids at school? They’re always asking me if you’re _weird,_ you know? Now instead of saying no, and them not believing me, I can say, well, he peels bananas wrong, I guess. And maybe they’ll leave me the hell alone?” He looks up, suddenly uncertain. “Is that okay?”

Doc’s seen a glimpse of the bullying Marty deals with at school, here and there, and it hasn’t been appealing. He tosses his peel into the basket with all of Einstein’s empty food cans, gives Marty the brightest smile he can muster. “If it relieves some of the pressure they’re putting on you? It’s _fine_. Now, finish that up and come over here, we’re going to start by pulling out the sparkplugs…”

* * *


	4. Balm

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: warmth

* * *

September nights on the edge of the Sierra Nevadas, the verdict: cold as _shit_.

Marty huddles down into his poncho; it’s been useful having a garment that does double duty as a blanket, but tonight it just isn’t cutting it. It’s been ages since that grade school camping trip and he’d forgotten how cold it could get at night out here, away from the heat bubble of modern human life that had always kept _his_ Hill Valley warm enough to pretend it was a little farther south. Here, there’s nothing, unless you count anemic iron stoves and the steam from trains and maybe _horse farts_.

And they aren’t even anywhere near those meager heat sources, all alone out here in the scrub. There’s a fire, but he can’t find a good distance to be from it that isn’t either roasting him or doing nothing at all, and it keeps shifting in the wind, leveling blasts of smoke into his face. 

The wind also carries in a noise from somewhere nearby, the howling of… a wolf, a coyote? A fox? Can foxes howl? Marty really hopes foxes can howl, but he’s guessing probably not. 

“Great, hi,” he says, not sure why he’s talking to a possibly vicious animal when he could just do the _normal_ driven-crazy-by-isolation thing and talk to himself. “Guess you’ll want to eat me, after I freeze to death.”

“You’re being melodramatic,” says a voice from behind him and oh, thank _goodness_ , Doc’s _back_. He’s stopped at the edge of the clearing, tying down his horse next to the one Marty’s been borrowing from him; poor thing's weighed down with a pack that’s completely stuffed with supplies. “Nothing of the sort’s going to happen, at least not if I have anything to say about it.”

“What, do you have an electric blanket in that pack?” Kidding. Mostly.

He can feel Doc’s presence settle next to him. “What good would that do, without electricity? No, I just mean that the temperature isn’t nearly low enough to induce hypothermia, assuming you haven’t gone and gotten yourself wet.”

Marty shivers just imagining it. “God, no. I’m not that stupid.”

“No, you’re not. But accidents do happen; it’s not always down to intelligence.”

“I guess that’s something this place teaches you, huh?”

Doc shrugs; Marty’s looking at him from the corner of his eyes, watches him chafe his hands against the heat from the fire. “I suppose so.”

Silence for a moment; Marty shoulders the poncho-blanket higher up around his ears. “Is this gonna work? Tomorrow, I mean.”

“It… should.”

“Like the lightning strike should have worked?”

Doc frowns; Marty’s not even looking at him but he can feel it in the set of his frame where he’s leaned just slightly in against Marty. “That _did_ work, if I recall.”

“Yeah,” Marty says. He laughs, short and sharp, bubbling out of him the way laughter always does in the cold; it’s caught in a shiver. “But that was a million to one shot and we both know it.”

Doc sighs, a dragging sound, and Marty knows that he’s going to get more honestly than he can probably handle. “We have all the energy we need and there's no timing issue, so less precision is required. The biggest variable is what effect my modified fuel source will have on the train’s boiler. We can account for all the possibilities we want, but the fact remains that we _must_ reach 88 miles per hour before the edge of the ravine, or we’ll do far worse than crash into a movie theater.”

Marty nods, a little numb. “Odds?”

“Probably… ten to one? It’s hard to say. Much better than a million to one, at least.”

A ragged exhale, and Marty nods again. “Better than we’ve survived already, over and over. I just wish I could stop _worrying_.”

Another stretch of silence, then Marty sees Doc frown at the fire, push himself to his feet. “Doc?" 

“I’ll be right back,” comes the reply, and then Doc returns with a heavy blanket from the pack. He sits back down beside Marty, awkwardly shrugging the blanket up over the both of them. Cast around them like half of a tent, it does a better job of catching the heat from the fire, letting it diffuse through the captured air into a comfortable warmth. 

“It’s not exactly an electric blanket,” Doc says, shrugging again, “But hopefully it’ll suffice?”

_I’m sorry I can’t promise everything_ , Marty hears, unspoken, and he just nods, smiles in gratitude. “Yeah, Doc,” he says, “It’s great.”

* * *


	5. In Too Deep

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> prompt: pepsi

* * *

“Aw, come _on_ you god damn piece of shit motherf… er, sorry.”

“I’ve told you, Marty,” Doc says, wiping a rag across his forehead. He doesn’t look up. “I don’t give a good goddamn what kind of language you use around here, and I’m fairly certain Einstein doesn’t either.” Across the room, Einstein whines from his bed, unwilling to commit any more energy than that to acknowledging his own name. “You’ve certainly heard some colorful things from me, from time to time.”

“I’m still sorry.” Marty gives the clamp another weak pull; it doesn’t budge. They’re working on some kind of housing, something heavy-duty with a lot of lead plating, and Doc might have explained what it’s for but Marty honestly can’t remember for sure. “I shouldn’t be insulting your work, it’s just so _hot_ and nothing’s _working_.”

Doc sighs, setting the rag aside. He’s been stripped down to his undershirt for two hours now, which is more than just a little distracting, okay, even if he’s clearly wilting in the August heat just as badly as Marty is.

“It _is_ hot,” Doc says, bracing his hands on the table’s edge, regarding the misbehaving piece of equipment between them with a dark, baleful gaze. Marty can feel the sweat beading at his hairline, running down under the collar of his t-shirt to darken the thin, threadbare fabric. His face feels flushed and he isn’t sure how much is the heat and how much is the ropey line of Doc’s shoulders, the cling of the thin, damp undershirt, the way his hands are shaking just slightly against—

Marty closes his eyes, bites his lip, takes a breath. It’s the heat. Seriously, it’s too cloying to even think about someone like that right now, to even _speculate_ about the possibility of physical contact. If Marty could be suspended in a void right now, he’d go for it, just for the chance to shed some of this goddamned sweat. If he can just focus on that image for a minute, just hang onto that—

“Marty!” Doc gasps, a little weakly, and there’s a clatter and then an arm around his back, tugging him up against gravity. Oh. _Oh_ , had he—oh man, he’s so _dizzy._

“Okay,” Doc says, somewhere close to his ear; it’s the heat, it’s the _goddamned heat_. “It’s time for a break.”

“Yeah,” Marty says.

“Let’s get you sitting—oh. Hm. No chairs.”

“Yeahhhh.”

“You have no idea what you’re saying, do you?” Doc sounds a little amused but also pretty worried alongside it, and eventually just lowers Marty down to the floor, letting him collapse into a seated position on the concrete, slightly lopsided.

Then he vanishes.

Marty’s just beginning to process this fact, just starting to worry about it, when he hears the refridgerator over in the living area open and close, and a few seconds later, something cold and metallic slips into his hand. He opens his eyes, curious.

Oh, hey. It’s a Pepsi. _Bitchin’._

Then Doc sits down across from him, a little more stiffly than Marty’s graceless slump, and pops the tab on a second can. “I’m sure you’re eager to drink it,” he says, taking a sip from his own. “But at least consider using it as an icepack first. It’ll help bring your core temperature down.”

Marty nods a little woodenly, presses the can against his forehead, his cheek. It doesn’t take long for his thoughts to refocus, crystallizing in the cold. “…mf. God, that feels good.”

“I’m sure it does. You back with me?”

“Yeah. Jeez, I’m sorry, I don’t usually respond that way to the heat.” He presses the can against his neck, shivers hard in something halfway between ‘too cold’ and _rapture._

“You don’t usually spent the hottest days of the year slaving over machinery. I’m sorry, Marty. I got us in a little over our heads this time.”

Marty sighs, finally reaching to pull the tab on his can; the cool hiss of the carbonation escaping is like music. “S'okay. Just need to take breaks more often.”

“Here, here,” Doc says, hamming it up a little as he lifts his can in Marty’s direction, soliciting a toast that ends up sounding more like a hollow thunk than a clink, when Marty summons the energy to tap his can against Doc’s. When he finally drinks, taking a long draw from the frigid metal can, it’s amazing—better than he’s ever tasted it, cold and sugary and perfect. He could almost laugh because it feels like he’s in a damn _commercial_ —all ice cubes colliding in mid-air and beads of condensation sliding down a glass and sweet, syrupy brown heaven. It makes him feel like everything in life could be good, could be simple, if he would just let go and _let it be simple_ —

—then he opens his eyes, sees Doc regarding him steadily with that kind dark gaze, full of fondness and lingering concern and god, forget the shirt and the bare arms and all of it—just the eyes alone are doing him in.

And Doc was right, Marty realizes, sipping carefully from his can, trying not to let his hand shake. He is in way, _way_ over his head.

* * *


	6. Handholds

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt: "Take my hand."

*

How many times have they been here—reaching, stretching, desperate for contact?

_[”C’mon, kid,” the guy says—Marty can’t think of him as a ‘stranger’, just a man, and not only because they’re in the guy’s house and not in some alley somewhere, but also because there’s something about this meeting that feels like history in the making—offering a hand to haul Marty up out of the mess of netting and dominoes and spilled books and papers. “I’ll give you the grand tour.”_

_Marty looks around; there’s just the one room. Then he gets it, okay, it’s a joke, and he laughs a little and takes the offered hand and says, “Sure thing,” like this is something that happens to him every day.]_

Uncountable times they’ve offered it—a lifeline, a helping hand, camaraderie, just the simple sentiment of _I understand_ at the end of a bad day. 

_[He’s been coming round Doc’s for maybe six months now, and when he walks in that day he tries to act like everything’s normal, like everything’s okay. Like the black eye and the tightness in his throat mean nothing. He saunters in, drops his backpack, slaps his hand into Doc’s in the casual, modified handshake they’ve been using as a greeting up until now. But then Doc doesn’t let go._

_“Marty,” he says, upset, concerned, cautious. “What happened to your eye?”_

_“I, uh…” Marty says, and in just those two syllables he can hear the tears in his voice, threatening. There’s a beat of indecision, and then he’s being reeled in by the grip on his hand, pulled into a hard hug. Doc’s free arm clamps around his shoulders, and Marty finds his hands curling into Doc’s labcoat, and he could honestly cry. Does, in fact, quiet and muffled, until he thinks his voice has come back._

_“It was just, the guys at school,” he says, talking into Doc’s shirt. “They, ah, said some things…” he trails off, and the embrace tightens and he knows he doesn’t have to say any more, that Doc understands.]_

There’s all this baggage society attaches to it, right? Lovey dovey shit about holding hands in the moonlight, that moment in the movies where the romantic hero takes the girl’s hands and the music swells and all the little kids in the audience groan and cover their eyes. But he knows the feeling of Doc’s hand in his better than he knows it from any of his family—no surprise there, since as far as they’re concerned, only _babies_ want their hand held.

_[He’s sitting across a diner table from Doc, who’s rambling on about something or other, and he can still smell the gunpowder on Doc’s clothes and in his hair even though he left the vest and the ruined radiation suit back at the garage. He should be focusing on his food but every bite tastes like metal and ash, and he thinks maybe he’s freaking out a little, or shutting down—this exhausted, it’s hard to tell the two apart. His free hand shakes a little, fingers tap-tapping against the formica erratically._

_Then the hand is being stilled, gentle fingers curling around his, knuckles brushing his palm. When he looks up, Doc has stopped talking, is looking at him with eyes that ask, Are you ok?_

_And Marty isn’t, not really, even though he’s also better than he’s been in a week. He doesn’t answer, just holds on tight and presses his eyes closed, and nods.]_

And hell, maybe sometimes he wishes it _was_ like that, that if this was their movie, there’d be a place for that exultant crescendo in the soundtrack somewhere. But they’re always moving, and things are so hectic, and by the time he’s working up the guts to say something or maybe to just hold the contact a little longer than necessary and let the language of that do the talking, it’s suddenly too late. And that’s okay, it’s fine. As long as he can get them both back home safely, he can live with the idea that Doc’s heart’s always gonna be back in 1885, because the alternative is unthinkable. And maybe _I need you_ matters more than _I love you_ , in the end.

_[”Give me your hand!” Doc shouts, reaching for all he’s worth. The moment has a weird, slowed-down quality to it, as Marty feels his horse start to flag, feels the distance between them growing as the train barrels onward. It’s hyper-detailed, and he can see every muscle in every finger straining toward him, desperate._

_Then he digs his heels in and urges the horse forward in one last push, and hands wind into his shirt and there’s a terrifying moment when he has no footing and the only thing keeping him from being sucked down into the wheels is Doc’s determination to hold onto him, to not let him go.]_

“Emmett!” Marty yells against the wind, trying to get some sideways momentum into his rope, stretching out one arm. “Take my hand!”

And as always, there’s a practical reason for it—this is the third time the clocktower has tried to kill one or both of them, and Marty’s getting a little sick of it—but there’s a moment while they’re scrabbling against the ropes and Emmett’s hand slides into his like it belongs there, fingers slipping between his briefly before settling on a better grip, and this teenage version of his friend makes a breathy little noise of surprise and Marty thinks maybe, _maybe_ — 

But he’s got both their lives to save and a levitating car to help build and an entire city to ensure the existence of, and there’s no time for fantasies. The moment passes, leaving one more sense-memory to burn and itch in the palm of his hand forever.

*


End file.
